Don’t know how to help you with those vdi problems, but here is an out of the box thinking: tell him to ask a neighbor.

I have a similar situation so i got a hetzner VM and set up wireguard connections from both ends, so that vm serves as a hub/router. Then you can just ssh into the machine via vpn and do an update, upgrade or whatever.

If you stick with Ubuntu lts, it will require very little maintenance.

Not that I’m using them, but what about these two?

https://www.truenas.com/truenas-scale/

https://www.proxmox.com/en/

Maybe check how long it is already going, so it can give you some confidence. Forgejo is a fork of gitea, which is a fork of gogs.

Also, codeberg, a nonprofit from Germany, is supporting development.

https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/

The codebase history of Forgejo and its predecessors predates Codeberg. However, since 2022, Codeberg is backing the development of Forgejo as an umbrella organization.

Thanks!

What did you read? Can you share a link?

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They are having the wrong direction since years. If anything, this is the same direction.

Source?

Can you elaborate on this?

I am looking into doing the same as op and I have no idea what I’m doing.

If you have been running servers since the 90s, can you provide the list of do and donts?

Did that instance have public registration? What speaks against having it for private (family) use only, as a gateway to the public instances?